Hot Frosty (dir. Jerry Ciccoritti)
By: Adam Freed
The weather outside may be frightful, but Netflix and director Jerry Ciccoritti have cooked up something absurdly delightful this holiday season. Audiences tired of rinse and repeat romantic winter fare need look no further than the self-deprecating and joyfully ridiculous 85 minute romp Hot Frosty. Lacy Chabert (Mean Girls) plays Kathy, a widow who has turned an icy shoulder to the idea of romance. This is of course until an Adonis-like snowman comes to life and presents her with an opportunity to stoke the fires of passion once again. No, this isn’t a seedy Christmas themed adult novel, rather a PG-rated Netflix film that has so much fun presenting its own ridiculousness that it manages to bring skeptical hot cocoa sipping audiences along for the ride.
The snowman, Jack is played by Dustin Milligan, who very likely moonlights as a male model, comes to life when Kathy shows him (in snowman form) an unexplainable act of kindness. With a purity of heart and confounding amount of naivete, Jack attempts to help Kathy embrace the warmth of companionship as Christmas quickly approaches. Chabert and Milligan share just enough chemistry to keep a preposterous plot from derailing completely. The film graciously shows its hand with the casting of Craig Robinson (Hot Tub Time Machine, This is the End) who as Sheriff Nathaniel Hunter blankets it with the appropriate level of winking camp. No, the story of a woman engaging in a romantic story with an attractive snowman is not meant to be taken seriously, and maybe this holiday season, a little silliness is exactly what is needed.
Target Score 6/10 Christmas Cookies: Jerry Ciccoritti’s absurdist farce of a holiday romance takes delightful aim at its genre contemporaries. Hot Frosty explores the great lengths that audiences are asked to travel in avoidance of a common sense approach to enjoying Yuletide Romantic films.
Hot Frosty is included in Movie Archer’s bite sized coverage of Holiday Streamer Month!